(Credit: Marty Sohl / Met Opera)

Sonya Yoncheva is pushing back at The New York Times following a review of “Norma” that compared the soprano to Angel Blue.

Yoncheva took to Twitter and said, “I’ve received some PM from you concerning my opinion on recent critic about ‘Norma.’ You see, Mr Zachary Woolfe from the New York Times had ALWAYS written bitter critics about me since my very first appearances at the Met Opera, so this one was not a surprise. I respect his hard work.”

In his review, Woolfe headlined the article stating, “Two Operas, Two Sopranos, Two Very Different Impacts.” He added, “Sonya Yoncheva doesn’t fill out the long lines of ‘Norma’ at the Met, while Angel Blue is a warm, sincere Violetta in ‘La Traviata.'”

The review also stated that Yoncheva “struggled to sustain, with an unsettled vibrato and big, gulping breaths breaking up core arias like ‘Casta diva.’ Without powerful, poised, flexible singing — “beauty of tone and correct emission,” as Lilli Lehmann, a great Norma, put it — we feel none of the necessary awe for the character.”

This is the second time in Yoncheva’s Met history that Woolfe uses a review to compare the Bulgarian soprano to another singer who was performing different repertoire.

Back in 2017, Woolfe’s “La Traviata” review featured the following headline: “A Soprano Showdown, and a Winner.” Throughout the review, he compared Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais, who was singing “Rusalka” at the time, and Yoncheva, who was performing “La Traviata,” by stating, “while Ms. Yoncheva’s tone has grown fuller and richer in recent seasons, Ms. Opolais’s has thinned and paled.” His review ended by stating, “while Ms. Opolais is scheduled to star in a new staging of Puccini’s ‘Tosca’ at the Met on New Year’s Eve, this weekend left me wishing that Ms. Yoncheva, who sings the role for the first time next season with the Philadelphia Orchestra, was doing it instead.”

Woolfe’s wish eventually came true. Later that year, Opolais bowed out of the new production of “Tosca” she was set to headline for “personal reasons.” Yoncheva eventually replaced Opolais. Since then Opolais has only performed in a production of “Suor Angelica” in 2018 and has not returned since.